adios

I'm being discharged tomorrow! As long as I don't spike a fever overnight, I'm getting OUTTA here tomorrow and I can go to family housing. I'm seriously so antsy to get out of here - last night I couldn't sleep at all (well, there are other factors, I'll tell you later), I can't wait to sleep in a normal bedroom in a normal bed in our family housing apartment. AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!! My counts have been increasing as hoped, and everything seems to be moving in the right direction. My doctors are happy with my progress, and hopefully things transition easily in IPOP.

So, last night. I could NOT sleep. I had 5mg of Ambien and 1mg of Ativan, and I was seriously wide awake. I don't even understand how that's physiologically possible, but whatever. Anyway, I'm laying in bed trying to fall asleep when my nurse comes in around 2 or 3am and says, "You have low potassium, so we're going to have to hook you up to a heart monitor and give you some IV potassium." What?! I've had low potassium before - and they gave me potassium. I've never been hooked up to a heart monitor! Apparently it's Johns Hopkins Hospital policy that if your potassium falls below 3.0, you have to be hooked up to a heart monitor until they raise your potassium above 3.0. Mmmkay. So I'm hooked up with all these little nodes and cords to this massive machine, and they hang some IV potassium. My nurse gave me more Ativan (I think, things get fuzzy here), and oddly enough, I was finally able to fall asleep for a while, with all that machinery hooked up. As soon as the potassium IV bag was done, they had to wake me up and take blood. Then 1/2 hour later, the blood results came back and my potassium was 4.2, and they took me off the monitor. I got more Ativan (I think?) and was able to sleep for a little bit before being woken up at 8am. What a night! I was exhausted this morning - that's not restful sleep!

KK arrived today and the day has been pretty uneventful. I still feel a bit nauseous and tired, and I still have some chest pain after I eat (and I can only eat toast and easy stuff like that), but otherwise I'm fine. They're taking me off all of my antibiotics as of tomorrow, and I'll be taking the majority of my meds orally. This is a big change from the last time I was discharged - I was self-administering IV meds for almost a month after being discharged, waking myself up in the middle of the night to hook myself up and then unhook myself from the bags of medication. This time it feels really different going into IPOP - but I guess we'll see on Saturday when I have my first appointment.

I'm going to go watch So You Think You Can Dance and then hopefully get some sleep tonight - I seriously cannot wait to be discharged!